Were Cubs minor leaguers better than Louisiana pol at IDing racial tension?

One of the stories making national news these days involves Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who some 12 years ago when he was a mere state legislator gave a speech to a conference of people interested in organizing themselves for political purposes.

At least that’s the way Scalise, who is about to become the majority whip in the House of Representatives, tries to tell the story. He didn’t know that the group – European-American Unity and Rights Organization – was affiliated with one-time Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist politician David Duke.

DUKE, OF COURSE, downplays the racial hang-ups his group’s members have, claiming they’re merely using their right to express their views and organize themselves for future electoral power.

But what caught my attention in the reports coming from the Washington Post and New Orleans Times-Picayune, which appear to be inspired by a report in the New Orleans alternative weekly paper The Gambit, was the fact that a baseball club took the situation seriously enough to back off of the conference.

That ball club was the Iowa Cubs, the Des Moines-based outfit that is the Chicago Cubs top minor league affiliate.

It seems the Iowa Cubs were in New Orleans the same weekend as the conference in 2002 to play a series against the New Orleans Zephyrs, and in fact were supposed to stay in the same hotel where the event was held.

THE IOWA CUBS at the time had six African-Americans among their 30 ballplayers and coaches who travel with the team, and Cubs management thought there was enough potential for an incident that they didn’t want their team subjected to being in contact with so many EURO (that’s what they call themselves) members.

“We would just as soon stay away from a group that will create controversy,” team general manager Sam Bernabe said to The Gambit back then. The Zephyrs, who according to Pacific Coast League rules cover the costs of teams traveling to New Orleans to play their team, found another hotel.

There wound up being no confrontation between racially-motivated ideologues and future Cubs ballplayers.

But what does it say that a minor league baseball team knew more about the group that Scalise was to speak to, than Scalise did himself?

FOR THE EXPLANATION that Scalise has given in recent days to the Post and Picayune news reports is that he was poorly staffed at that point in his service in the Louisiana Legislature and didn’t know what the EURO group was about,

He says now he never would have spoken to the group if he had comprehended what they stood for or that Duke (who served one term in that state Legislature and has tried unsuccessfully running for governor and president) was connected to them.

But the Washington Post reported that Scalise was invited to the conference by long-time associates of Duke, and quoted people who say that Scalise should have realized there was a connection – unless he’s truly clueless about the Louisiana political scene.

Although I also realize that the reason all of this is coming out now is because there are those people who want to have the new Republican-run Congress (both chambers) tainted with all kinds of unseemly allegations.

BURY THEM IN muck, and maybe some of it will stick and bolster the political opposition’s chances of making the GOP domination of Congress a mere two-year run. I’m not ignoring the self-serving reasons for this tawdry story coming out now.

But still, it appears that the Iowa Cubs management was more capable than Scalise of identifying a potentially ugly situation and avoiding it. Which makes me wonder how much the people of Louisiana are suffering from his apparent lack of a political IQ?

Perhaps Iowa Cubs management should be in charge of coping with racial tensions, instead of training future ballplayers? Since based on the performance of the major league Cubs in recent years, they haven’t exactly succeeded at the latter!

Although I suspect Scalise would be just as inept as Cubs management at running a ball club.

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Quinn picking Vallas not really a shock

I’ll confess to being surprised when I heard Friday morning that it was the name “Paul Vallas” that would wind up appearing on the ballot for Democratic lieutenant governor nominee in next year’s state election cycle.

VALLAS: A political comeback?

Not that I should have been. Vallas, the one-time head of the Chicago Public Schools, has always been good for tossing out hints he’d like to be part of the local political system – even though he’s never held electoral office and was the guy who got beat by Rod Blagojevich back in the 2002 Democratic primary for governor.

SO THE IDEA that Vallas would be willing to move back to metro Chicago (he’s a native of suburban Crestwood, and still has family living in the area) isn’t odd.

There’s also the fact that Quinn doesn’t seem capable of getting any conventional choices to run along with him come 2014.

The BIG names that have been tossed about are state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, and city Treasurer Stephanie Neely – both of whom have said they’re not interested. The general theory amongst political observers was that Quinn would want a black person paired up with him to appeal to the city’s and south suburban significant African-American vote.

But it honestly would not surprise me to learn that NOBODY of any significance currently in the city’s political structure wanted to be paired up with Quinn.

NOT SO MUCH because nobody wants their name associated too closely with Quinn. But because the post itself is one with no real duties – other than what Quinn wants done with it.

And it is the post that has a small circle of people who are outspoken in their belief that it should be abolished – just let the state attorney general be promoted to governor in the event that succession is needed!

QUINN: Does mid-90s CPS glory bolster gov?

So Quinn was going to have to come up with a politically oddball choice. Vallas probably is amongst the most conventional oddball he could possibly find.

What should we think?

I’M SURE SOME people are going to try to attack Vallas (and Quinn, by association) on the grounds that he doesn’t live in Illinois any longer. State law does say a candidate for statewide office must have lived in the state at least three years prior to the election in question.

And Vallas has made a national name for himself for the number of public school districts he has tried to reform – including Philadelphia and New Orleans, but most recently Bridgeport, Conn. Although that school board is loaded with people who are looking for excuses to dump him.

Which may mean Vallas is soon unemployed – and in need of a new job. Lieutenant governor, anyone?

The critics in Illinois will bash Vallas’ residency by claiming he doesn’t live here anymore. But it seems he never gave up his voter registration (and he does still have family living in the area).

HE ACTUALLY CAST ballots in the last two election cycles, as he kept a voter registration in suburban Palos Heights. Which won’t be enough to appease the ideologues. It makes me wonder if they’re already trying to hire election law expert Burt Odelson to represent their case in court. Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Rauner is already saying Quinn is “running scared” by picking Paul.

But just as Odelson’s legal battle against Mayor Rahm Emanuel ultimately failed because the election residency laws are not as firm as some want to think, it may turn out to be the same for Vallas.

He gets to stay an Illinois resident for political purposes because he never gave up his registration. Now if someone could show he also was voting in other states’ elections, it would be a different issue. But I haven’t heard anyone make that allegation.

Although the Capitol Fax newsletter reported that Illinois State Board of Elections officials were saying the change in law that makes governors pick a running mate prior to the primary means everything may change. “There’s no way to determine an outcome of a scenario” like that, board Chairman Rupert Borgsmiller told the newsletter.

I DON’T KNOW how much Vallas really helps Quinn – he couldn’t even beat Blagojevich, who supposedly was the candidate in that 11-year-old election cycle who appealed to Democrats who lived outside of Chicago.

Vallas was regarded as “too Chicago” for Illinois to accept. Then again, Quinn gets hit with the same claim. If anything, this may bolster the Quinn/Vallas Chicago support to the point where it overcomes the vote from the rural parts of Illinois that definitely will favor a Republican challenger.

Which means Quinn has nothing to lose. And Vallas has everything to gain if the Democratic “top of the ticket” winds up prevailing against whichever candidate the Republicans pick to go for governor – an office they used to “own” (for 26 years, from James R. Thompson through George Ryan) until 2002.

If anything, the fact that Vallas contemplated in 2010 a Cook County Board president run as a Republican might hurt him more. Or at least make him look ridiculous. Although the fact that he never actually ran makes it like more of a tawdry rumor than anything else.

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Isaac hits Chicago! And we’re happy. What a difference a couple of days make

Isaac is the one-time hurricane turned tropical depression that is going to hit the Midwest and the Chicago area this weekend in the form of heavy rain.

We’re going to get soggy weather both Saturday and Sunday – if the weather forecasts are correct. Of course, considering that the days of 100-degree-plus heat we had this summer has burned its memory into our brains, the idea of some cooling rainfall may well be a relief.

IN FACT, MOST Midwestern-oriented officials are praising the fact that we’ll get a bit of wet weather. We’re in drought conditions all across Illinois – with the southernmost tip of the state getting hit the worst.

Everybody thinks we could use the remnants of a hurricane that swept through New Orleans and the states of Louisiana and Mississippi seven years to the days after Hurricane Katrina left its historic devastation.

This time around, the harm isn’t quite so intense. Many businesses already are reopening, and people who had to flee just a few days ago are returning to their homes.

Although this weather story is just like many other weather stories – its significance depends on how it personally affected you.

I CAN SIT back and write this commentary from a detached perspective because all I’m getting hit with is some rainfall this weekend that may well wash some of the grime that has accumulated on my car.

I’m sure there are some people who got wiped out by Katrina who got whacked equally hard by Isaac. They’re going to forevermore equate the two storms equally – even though all the reports coming from the south indicate otherwise.

I do know a few people who live in (or near) New Orleans who have some personal stories to tell of Katrina, and I’m sure Isaac will give them some more tales to tell.

Perhaps I’ll be able to get something from them that I can share with readers of this web log in the near future. They are stories we, personally, should take into account. Unless we really want to be gullible enough to think that what we’re going to experience this weekend is the extent of Isaac.

BUT UNTIL THEN, my experience with Isaac will have to deal with this weekend, which may well center around the fact that I’ll have to dig the raincoat out of the closet for the first time in several weeks.

We’re coming up on Labor Day, we’ll soon have the sight of college football dominating the television on weekends, and the presidential campaign season is about to kick into high gear.

Summer is coming to an end. We really are coming up on autumn. So perhaps a heavy, but cooling, rainfall is ever so appropriate.

I did find it reassuring to learn that officials at the southern end of the Chicago area (Will County and the part of metro Chicago that stretches into Indiana) are convinced they’re ready to handle the rain that they say could increase the Kankakee River watershed with 5 inches of rain – compared to 1 inch that would be expected from a rainfall.

BECAUSE THE LAST thing anybody wants is some flooding. Even though it wouldn’t compare to the flooding that has hit greater New Orleans, it still becomes an inconvenience – particularly for the few individuals who get devastated by the water worse than the norm.

Although I can think of one benefit to having such rainfall this weekend.

A part of me feels like the rhetoric from the Republican National Convention dirtied us all up a bit. We can use the cleansing effect of a natural shower – otherwise that and the combination of next week’s Democratic nominating convention would just be too much trash talk crusted onto our souls for anyone to take.

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What is Vallas thinking?

It has always been rumored that Paul Vallas, the one-time Chicago Public Schools boss who exiled himself from Illinois after losing a 2002 Democratic primary bid for governor, would someday return back home and try to make himself relevant on our city’s political scene.

Yet the man who has in recent years headed school systems in Philadelphia and New Orleans (and now is head of the Louisiana-run Recovery School District) seems to have a funny way of trying to make friends who would enable him to return home someday to a position of significance.

MOST PROMINENTLY, VALLAS contemplated running for the Cook County Board presidency – as a Republican – in the upcoming Feb. 2 primary.

As things turned out, Vallas elected not to turn himself into a member of the GOP (I wonder how many Republicans would have ever trusted him, but that is subject material for another day’s commentary). Earlier this week, it appears that he now thinks of himself once again as a Democrat.

It was on Wednesday that Chicago’s former inspector general, David Hoffman, made it known that he has Vallas’ endorsement in the same Feb. 2 primary – Hoffman wants to replace Roland Burris in the U.S. Senate.

Which means Hoffman is the candidate who thus far hasn’t gained much traction among Democratic primary supporters – most seem to be favoring the candidacies of Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias or Chicago Urban League head Cheryle Jackson. (Jacob Meister may have his name on the ballot, but his campaign has become so fringe I have trouble seriously acknowledging it).

IN FACT, ABOUT the only people who seem to take Hoffman’s candidacy seriously are those Republican sympathizers who like the idea of someone with a record of rooting out improper activity at City Hall.

Not that any of those people would actually deign to vote for Hoffman come next month – they’d rather have “one of their own” from the Republican Party, perhaps one whose ideology will more blatantly apease their conservative-leaning thoughts on issues.

So that is where Vallas has put himself. He’s backing the candidate that doesn’t seem to have much backing amongst his so-called partisan allies in the Democratic Party.

It makes it seem that Vallas is engaging in some sort of political hissy fit – still bitter about losing to Rod Blagojevich (who if I recall right won that ’02 primary because he convinced a significant number of rural Illinois Democrats that he was the best choice to be Illinois’ chief executive rather than Vallas or Burris).

IN FACT, HOFFMAN played off the memories of that ’02 primary when Democrats were trying to pick their first successful gubernatorial candidate in 26 years.

“I doubt I’d be standing here today running for the U.S. Senate if Paul Vallas had become governor of Illinois in 2002 instead of Rod Blagojevich,” Hoffman told reporter-types earlier this week. “Pay-to-play, the culture of corruption, the stain on this very Senate seat, we would not be talking about these things had we elected … Vallas.”

Instead, we get the sense of a person in Paul Vallas who is more interested in getting some sort of petty grudge settled by refusing to back other candidates who might be a bit more credible in this particular campaign.

Now I realize that every person has the right to support whomever they want and to make that support as public (or private) as they so choose. It would be un-American for me to say that Vallas ought to be silenced on who he wants to support in this election cycle – even though I’m not sure if he can even vote in our elections this time around.

AFTER ALL, HE is a former Illinois resident, even though I understand his family remains in the Chicago area and he has always made it clear he plans to return to the metropolitan area some day.

But for now, he’s the guy who’s trying to make sense of the school system in the New Orleans area, which was devastated along with the city back in the days of Hurricane Katrina (did that really occur more than four years ago?)

I’d like to think that his interests would be better served by focusing on his current circumstances, rather than trying to influence our circumstances before he’s fully relocated himself back to our midst.

Paul Vallas, who once was a budget director for Mayor Richard M. Daley, built himself a local legacy for the work he did in the 1990s to revamp the struggling Chicago Public Schools system

WHILE IT WOULD not be accurate to say he totally fixed the system (no one man could do that), he definitely gave it some seriously-needed kicks in the heinie to get it moving in the right direction when it comes to trying to provide the city’s schoolchildren with the tools they’re going to need if they’re going to take our city forward in future decades.

If Vallas were to depart this Earth, so to speak, in the near future, that would be the lede of his obituary. I’d hate to see him turn that legacy from one of an educator to one of a political crank with a few unwisely-chosen words such as these expressed this week.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Paul Vallas says he supports David Hoffman for U.S. Senate from Illinois because of his (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/elections/chi-vallas-backs-hoffman-31dec31,0,2073274.story) “refusal to be bullied and intimidated.” Some interpret that as not quite (http://www.chicagoreader.com/TheBlog/archives/2009/12/31/paul-vallas-endorses-david-hoffmanthen-points-out-his-flaws-and-praises-his-opponents) a positive.

Vallas still has some work (http://www.rsdla.net/Home.aspx) to complete before he returns his focus to home.

He’s stayin’ in N’Awlins

On a certain level, Todd Stroger had to be incredibly happy on Friday.

That was when it became publicly known that the candidate whom some Republicans publicly claimed was their best chance to dethrone Stroger is NOT going to seek the office of Cook County Board president come the 2010 elections.

PAUL VALLAS, THE one-time Chicago Public Schools chief who now is trying to rebuild the school system in New Orleans, had suggested earlier this year he would return to the Chicago area later this year and would consider becoming a Republican so he could challenge Stroger.

With his family still living in and around suburban Crestwood, Vallas will always be a Chicago-area guy, regardless of where he works.

And Vallas, on paper, would be a bigger name than anyone the Republican Party likely can come up with on its own. But Vallas on Friday let it be known he has signed another contract to work for the New Orleans school system.

So he’s not coming back any time soon to the city and state that rejected him as a gubernatorial candidate back in 2002.

AND NOW, THE Republicans don’t have any obvious alternative to put on the ballot for county board president. Admittedly, Vallas would have been a long shot to win. But just about every other likely GOP candidate is a no shot.

Are we really destined to get another campaign by county board Commissioner Anthony Peraica of suburban Riverside? He has turned himself into a caricature, and I can’t envision any significant change in votes. Anybody who is disgusted with Stroger these days likely was appalled by Peraica back in ’06, and nothing has changed.

So now, Stroger can focus his campaign efforts on next year’s primary election. I fully expect a few of those county commissioners, and probably an ambitious politico or two from outside of county government, to try to challenge Todd for the Democratic Party’s nomination.

But should Stroger succeed in winning the primary, he likely would be able to do a light jog through the marathon of a campaign season to the general election finish line.

IT WON’T BE like the situation with the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois, where whoever wins a feisty, contested primary will have to deal with a Republican opponent who will receive significant help from the national GOP – which would love to put an Illinois seat in their partisan column.

In some ways, this could be good for the Democratic Party (if you believe that the Democratic Party’s electoral success is a good thing for the state as a whole).

For the dumping of Todd Stroger that some people are now fantasizing about (and which has managed to take on racial overtones, no matter how much some people want to deny that fact) could backlash against the Democratic Party.

Like it or not, the African-American electorate of Chicago that provides the bulk of support for Democratic Party candidates in Illinois statewide elections is not going to like the concept of two black officials (Stroger AND Sen. Roland Burris) being replaced by white guys (or maybe a white guy and girl).

THE IDEA THAT Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White would be the only black candidate on the Democratic Party ballot is not going to be seen as sufficient. It could legitimate cause some black voters to “sit out” the 2010 elections (there’s no circumstance that would cause significant numbers of African American voters to cast ballots for the GOP).

I have always thought it was most likely that either Burris or Stroger would need to be on the ballot offered up to local voters interested in Democratic Party candidates. Since I have always believed Burris is nothing more than an interim official completing the two years remaining on Barack Obama’s term in the U.S. Senate, that means I’m unofficially accepting of Stroger running for yet another term – even if watching him work at times gives the impression of a kid who might have been ready for the political post in another couple of years.

Besides, I can’t honestly say I ever thought Vallas would have been successful in the county board post.

Vallas has had success making improvements in public education systems that some people like to demonize as too bloated and too big (as though they have much of a choice in how many students they must accept).

BUT THE THOUGHT of him as a government official strikes me as being similar to the thought of Ralph Nader actually becoming president of the United States.

The consumer advocate has some great knowledge about a couple of specific areas, similar to how Vallas knows education administration.

But being a government chief executive means having to deal with issues of all types, including some things they’d probably prefer to ignore outright.

If it sounds like I’m saying I don’t think Vallas would be able to come up with any significant solution to the sales tax situation that is confronting Cook County government these days, you’d be correct.

IN THE END, Vallas did the right thing by returning to New Orleans. He has the chance to accomplish some great things in that city, parts of which have yet to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Combined with his success in Chicago and Philadelphia, he’s going to have some great stories to tell of his work when he does finally retire to the “country estate” in Crestwood.

But if he gave that up to run campaign bids, he’d threaten to turn his legacy from a great educator to a modern-day Al Hofeld – who despite his personal wealth NEVER won election to anything.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: One more year in New Orleans means no political campaign in ’10 (http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/no_schools_leader_paul_vallas.html) for Paul Vallas.

Could Vallas have actually won election as county board President? We likely (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2009/02/vallas-to-gop-is-likely-to-fail.html) will never know.

Vallas to the GOP is likely to fail

I’m starting to feel a little less awkward about having voted back in 2002 for Rod Blagojevich to be governor over Paul Vallas.

The Democratic primary that year was actually a three-way fight, but former Illinois attorney general Roland Burris was irrelevant outside of select neighborhoods on the South and West sides.

VALLAS WAS THE political star who had managed to implement significant changes to the culture that ran the Chicago Public Schools, and he tried to go for governor – only to lose to Blagojevich, who took the bulk of Democratic votes cast outside of Chicago.

Now I know some people who were among those North Side types who would have preferred Vallas for governor will try claiming now they knew all along something was wrong with Milorod.

But they’d be lying.

In fact, Vallas’ alleged actions of recent days have me convinced that the career educator likely would have been the wrong choice for governor back then. And they also have me convinced he likely never will become president of the Cook County Board. He’s one of those experts in a specific area who mistakenly thinks that makes him qualified to talk about lots of things.

PROMINENT CHICAGO JOURNALIST Carol Marin used her ties to the Chicago Sun-Times this week to report that Vallas has decided to go for the top post in county government, hoping he can take advantage of discontent with incumbent President Todd Stroger and run against him.

That means the Democrat Vallas is willing to go over to “the dark side” and become a Republican (hey, I was born in the South Chicago neighborhood. If I were from West Chicago in suburban DuPage County, I’d think the Dems were evil incarnate).

I can’t help but think that the moderate to liberal Vallas is going to find that many of the GOP faithful aren’t going to be willing to accept him – no matter how desperately they’d like to dump on Stroger come 2010.

To certain elements of the Republican Party, Vallas will always be some guy who sees something worthwhile in the large public school systems in places like Chicago, Philadelphia and New Orleans. Those are usually the systems that GOP people demonize so as to tout the benefits of parochial schools in the city or the public school systems of higher-income suburbs that can usually afford to do nicer things because they don’t have as many students to worry about.

MEANWHILE, BY EVEN thinking of switching parties, Vallas is going to burn whatever bridges he still had to the Chicago political establishment. He’s going to find that a lot of his former allies will turn on him, and the accompanying GOP gain just won’t make up for it.

I say that even though Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, is on record as saying he thinks Vallas would fit in well with the Illinois Republican Party. What else is he going to say?

On a certain level, Republican operatives are enjoying the spectacle of seeing a now nationally prominent Democrat show disenchantment with the party.

Besides, to people who have been paying attention, Vallas’ desire to go elsewhere has been apparent for some time. He turned down a chance to speak at the Democratic National Convention held last year in Denver. He could have been on stage with the Barack Obama show, and taken his share of credit for helping to bolster the public schools in Obama’s hometown.

INSTEAD, HE REFUSED to participate, because he knew the Democrats there would remember it, and it would undermine his attempt to use the one-time Party of Lincoln to bolster his political career.

Besides, the whole history of political party-switchers usually only benefits those people whose social beliefs are so conservative that they can’t take being part of a moderate-to-liberal party such as the Democrats. (Think Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond, who had such lengthy careers after switching parties that it almost sounds like a lame gag to imply they were ever Democrats).

If anything, Edward R. Vrdolyak is more typical of what happens to people who switch parties.

The one-time Cook County Democratic Chairman and alderman of the far Southeast Side’s 10th Ward gave up his ties to the party of JFK and FDR when it became apparent in the mid-1980s that Mayor Harold Washington had won the political fights between the two that are now remembered as “Council Wars.”

BUT VRDOLYAK never won elective office as a Republican, even though he tried a couple of times. And the Republicans on a national level were never really comfortable with having Vrdolyak in their ranks.

Privately, they may have been sympathetic to some of the acts he did in opposition to Washington, Chicago’s first African-American mayor. But they didn’t really want to be tainted by him. And there was the fact that he was then, and remains today, an urban creature.

His home neighborhood of the East Side is a place where people think of the old days when the nearby steel mills (a bit of disclosure, my grandfathers worked in those steel mills) were running at full capacity and they had decent-paying jobs.

Likewise, Aurelia Pucinski tried running for office as a Republican, only to become a Democrat again when she realized her Northwest Side Polish ethnic roots were too much for many Republicans to take. Vallas will find that he is equally out of place in those GOP circles - he's a guy who’s not about to denigrate the urban school experience the way many Republicans like to do.

IN THE END, Vallas may turn out to be an intelligent guy with much knowledge about management and education, but no common sense when it comes to politics. He seems to have forgotten one of the primary rules of remembering who your friends really are.

As the late Texas pundit Molly Ivins once titled one of her books of commentary, “You got to dance with them what brung you.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Paul Vallas is one of those guys who is an expert in one specific area (http://blogs.suntimes.com/marin/2009/02/exclusive_paul_vallas_will_run.html) who thinks that qualifies him to do everything equally well.

Could Vallas’ presence help the Republican Party attract more of Illinois’ non-white (http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/race/2009/02/can-the-gop-attract-more-people-of-color-with-a-black-rnc-chairman.html) population come the next countywide Election Day?

Vallas has some unfinished business to tend to with his current employer, the New Orleans public school system system, before he can start scheduling the moving van to (http://www.bayoubuzz.com/News/Louisiana/Government/Louisiana_Recovery_School_Vallas_Talks_Departure_Plans__8329.asp) bring his belongings back to Chicago.

Vallas re-run would be a mistake

Al Hofeld. Al Salvi. And on a national scale, H. Ross Perot.

All three men have one thing in common. They ran for a large-scale political office and came so close to winning that they thought they had found their future – only to learn that their near-victory was just a fluke.

COULD WE SOMEDAY be adding the name of Paul Vallas to that list?

It’s a possibility, since Vallas seems to have dreams of becoming Illinois governor, even though he lost the Democratic primary for that office in 2002.

Vallas, for those with short memories, is the former Chicago Public Schools chief who – after losing the primary to now-Gov. Rod Blagojevich – left the Second City to become head of the school system in Philadelphia, and now is trying to rebuild a school system in New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

But Vallas made some high-profile appearances in Chicago on Monday, where he did all the “wink, winking” and “nudge, nudging” possible to let people here know he’d like to move back to the Chicago area once his contract in New Orleans expires (he has one more year to go in Louisiana).

HE SPOKE TO a City Club of Chicago luncheon, then appeared at an evening program at Northwestern University’s school of continuing studies where he talked about the problems that confront public education – not just in New Orleans, but in Chicago and just about everywhere else in the country.

It allowed him to appear to be a more authoritative figure in his field of specialty than Blagojevich ever appears to be as governor of Illinois. It stirs up the thoughts of those people who voted for Vallas in ’02 that he could run in ’10 and could provide a sense of re-writing history so that the Blagojevich years “never happened.”

What stirs up those people is the fact that Vallas actually got more votes than Blagojevich in Chicago proper. It was only because of a large vote margin in the rural parts of Illinois that Blagojevich was able to win the primary, and even then by only a 21,000 vote margin statewide (which is the size of about half a ward in Chicago, or a small suburb).

Now of course, Vallas is being diplomatic at this point. After all, it is still two more years until the next gubernatorial primary. But he says his reading of the news clippings coming out of Chicago makes him see political people who are “frustrated and angered” with Blagojevich.

“I COULD HAVE made a difference, I would have gotten along with the Legislature a lot better,” Vallas told the gathering at the City Club.

Maybe he would have. Of course, Vallas would have run into the initial opposition that Blagojevich got – he is the first Democrat in 26 years to serve as Illinois governor, and rural Republicans had come to see the Executive Mansion in Springfield as their political domain.

But he might have been able to build up a stronger Chicago support in the Legislature, which would mean that the Statehouse Scene would really have become an “urban vs. rural” brawl.

But what is more important is to realize that we will never know what Vallas would have accomplished in a term or two as governor. He didn’t win the primary.

FOR THAT MATTER, he didn’t even win the vote majority in Chicago. The large African-American population in the city gave its support to Roland Burris’ gubernatorial primary, resulting in him winning the city as a whole. It was the white ethnic parts of Chicago that wanted Vallas (who is of Greek descent) over Blagojevich (a Serbian-American).

Those feelings would not automatically transfer through an eight-year time period. Too much time has passed, and Vallas is just another failed candidate.

Names such as Madigan (as in Lisa), Hynes and Jackson (as in Jesse Jr.) are the more credible considerations for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010 – provided, that is, that Blagojevich were to change his mind and decide not to seek a third term of running Illinois government from his home office in the Ravenswood neighborhood of Chicago.

My gut feeling says a Vallas ’10 campaign would turn to be a let-down, as he would never capture the sentiment that nearly saw him win the Democratic primary in ’02. The sooner he realizes that he had his chance, it didn’t happen, and he needs to move on with his life, the better off we Illinoisans all will be.

THAT’S WHY I bring up the names of Hofeld, Salvi and Perot. I suppose one could also throw Al Gore’s name into the mix, but thus far he has had the sense not to talk about running yet another campaign for president in this year’s elections.

Hofeld was the Chicago attorney with no prior electoral experience who ran for U.S. Senate in 1992 against incumbent Alan Dixon. He lost, but took enough support away from Dixon that Carol Moseley-Braun won that primary, and went on to win a six-year term in the Senate.

He took that notion of stealing support away from Dixon as evidence that he was qualified for political office and he got the Democratic nomination for Illinois attorney general – where he got beaten so badly by Republican Jim Ryan that he ended his dreams of winning electoral office.

Salvi got the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 1996 and was at the top of the ticket for Illinois Republican voters. Unfortunately for him, opponent Richard Durbin successfully tagged him as some sort of right wing nut, and his presence on the ballot helped Illinois Republicans recover from the devastating losses of 1994 – when the GOP took control of the Legislature and all six state constitutional offices.

SALVI TRIED AGAIN in 1998, and wound up losing the Illinois secretary of state race to Jesse White. He has kept his own political ambitions in check, although his wife made a bid for a seat in the Illinois House of Representatives.

Then, there’s Perot, whose campaign for president in 1992 caught the imagination of people who didn’t want George Bush the elder but whose conservative beliefs would keep them from ever casting ballots for a Democrat.

He didn’t win any electoral votes, but took 19 percent of the vote overall – a tremendous figure for a third-party campaign. His follow-up bid for president in 1996 didn’t even come close to that level – and political people haven’t heard much from H. Ross since then.

THERE IS ONE thing Salvi, Hofeld and Perot had in common – they all had significant personal wealth. They were able to pump significant amounts of cash into their own campaigns so as to ensure they could run competitively against opponents who were preferred by the party establishment.

That is one characteristic Vallas does not share. He had to struggle to pay off the debt from his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, and while he is earning a nice salary from his professional positions with various school boards, he is somebody who has to work for a living.

He doesn’t have the kind of money to pay for a credible campaign without outside donations. That could be the factor that spares us from adding to the list of political failures the name of “Vallas.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Paul Vallas wants (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=29198) to come back home.

How good a job is Paul Vallas doing in Louisiana? The New Orleans-based Times Picayune (http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1209360005313340.xml&coll=1) offers its perspective.

Al Hofeld’s campaign activities these days are limited (http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/neighbors.php?type=name&lname=Hofeld&fname=Al) to writing out checks for political donations.